Tanzania

by Grace Lusiola, Project Director, Post-Abortion Care Family Planning Project, EngenderHealth, Tanzania Many years ago, I lost my mother. She was only 37 years old, she died when she was having the ninth pregnancy. Not that she really had the children too close, but the fact that she started earlier and she continued when she didn’t really want more children. She continued to have kids because there was no family planning. And when she got … Continued

Burundian women living in Tanzanian refugee camps have reported fleeing their homes after being raped, but in the refugee camps rape is also alarmingly prevalent. According to interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch, many women do not receive proper post-rape care, and as abortion is only legally available in Tanzania when needed to save a woman’s life, many are forced to have the children.

In 2015, Pathfinder undertook a cross-country stakeholder analysis to identify key characteristics of strategies adopted to advance abortion rights and access, focusing on four countries – Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Democratic Republic of Congo – in which they and their partners have collaborated toward this end. This technical brief explores key themes from these four countries, each representing differing profiles of legal and social abortion restrictiveness.

In March 2016, the Tanzania Women Lawyers Association (TAWLA) called on health stakeholders, including journalists, to disseminate information on reproductive health rights and unsafe abortion in order to save women’s lives in the country.

Sarah C Keogh, Godfather Kimaro, Projestine Muganyizi, Affiliation: Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania Jesse Philbin, Affiliation: Guttmacher Institute, New York, United States of America Amos Kahwa, Affiliation: National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania Esther Ngadaya, Akinrinola Bankole https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2016/unsafe-abortion-common-tanzania-and-major-cause-maternal-death PLoS ONE, 11 September 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133933 This is the first nationally representative study of the incidence of abortion and the provision of post-abortion care in Tanzania. It was conducted by … Continued